coming up on our t.v. concerns growing over the expansion of n.s.a. surveillance since the war on terror started employees were spying on their lovers the agency was spying on the united nations and that's just what we found out over the weekend we'll speak with a former n.s.a. employee turned whistleblower ahead of. the conflict in syria may have reached a boiling point secretary of state john kerry says he has no doubt that assad's regime used chemical weapons on civilians so it is intervention inevitable a look at the options for the syrian conflict coming up. and speaking of chemical weapons a new report details how the u.s. once helped saddam hussein and the iraq ease with its chemical weapons attacks on iranian troops we'll dive into that topic in a moment. it's

monday august twenty sixth four pm in washington d.c. and lopez and you are watching r t let's get straight to today's top stories the national security agency was one of the most to secretive organizations in the u.s. now a hardly a day goes by when we don't hear about the n.s.a.'s latest scandal this weekend was no exception to major headlines ran on the front pages of newspapers around the world the first was a revelation that a number of n.s.a. employees were actually using the surveillance program capabilities to spy on their lovers or as they called it operation love i n t that's according to the chairwoman of the senate intelligence community committee dianne feinstein there are also about one thousand cases that this was actually happening that we know about and people who participated were reportedly disciplined. the second major revelation to

come out this week the german publication der spiegel reports that the n.s.a. managed to crack the encrypted codes protecting the un's internal video conferencing system allowing the n.s.a. to spy this comes just a short time after revelations came out about the agency's spying on the e.u. here to talk all things n.s.a. bill benny he's a thirty two year veteran of the n.s.a. and he helped design it some of the programs that the n.s.a. still uses today to spy before he turned into a whistle blower mr benny thank you so much for coming into the studio today now let's start by talking about the october two thousand and eleven vice a court ruling that was recently released by the obama administration the n.s.a. says that it was stepping out of the shadows by having this part released because it wants to show that it operates quote wofully and fixes mistakes when they are detected do you think that that is true that statement of operating lawfully and finding and fixing the stakes no i basically believe all the fights court orders to

do domestic spying are basically general court general warrants and they're in violation of the constitution that is the right for privacy the fourth amendment principally but also the first amendment in terms of. by giving that data what that does with the tolls them who's in who's associating with who internally in the united states that's that's violating the right of free association of the first amendment so when we how the however on the other hand you have john bates the judge having this scathing rhetoric within those court documents what does that do does that kind of solidify or not solidify the idea of the court being a rubber stamp court well i mean it what it is of course coming out and saying they really have no way of verifying them even the chief judge there is that that is no way of verifying what he's being told by and to say to the f.b.i. i mean that i've been saying for a long time they don't have any technical means of verifying the validity of the statements being made to them sure. i mean even in august of two thousand and two

the phase of court came out story was broken by the new york times where the pfizer court detected. seventy five cases where the f.b.i. solicited misled the court in soliciting seventy five warrants well that probably was only the tip of the iceberg too so i mean they haven't this is a longstanding problem they've known about it for a long time and they never really have had tempted to solve it now one of the purposes of edward snowden having revealed this huge surveillance apparatus today is that we presume that he thinks that things got out of control with the n.s.a. surveilling capabilities but already at the point of no return here where the n.s.a. can't be dismantled it's just too big no all you have to do start and funding them and they'll have to start cutting back on what they're doing so that's the way to do it like representative a modest initiative to to fund this activity that's the way to start if they don't stop start cutting even more just cut their funding that's the way to stop them now

when you were in the n.s.a. were there any reports of employees using these kind of surveillance capabilities to spy on their web or spy on anyone else that they wanted to not that i was aware of ok i didn't i did not know of any of that when i was there course i left after nine eleven so that's when all the domestic to domestic communications was starting to be collected by the n.s.a. but as you say it's possible right now it's possible yeah so this is this ability for abuse and the other thing to point out is that edward snowden the n.s.a. is saying that they are overwhelmed with trying to figure out how edward snowden got in took these documents because he was covering his tracks very very well so if someone like edward snowden do it and there is a ton of these people that i mean contractors that have this modestly others can do that too right well yes. the problem is they don't have any way of monitoring what's going on across their network and what they need to do is put together. an

automated system to do diagnostics of who's doing what on the network when they do it so that they could pick out people like snowden when he was downloading files as he did it or relatively soon thereafter i mean within fractions of a second so that but they don't have that capability now and so that's their that's still a major problem for them they can't monitor it they don't capable of monitoring who's doing what on their network on the i think to bring up is that with those employees that were reportedly reprimanded for being a part of that love tape the way that the n.s.a. found out about that was that they self reported so wasn't the safeguards that that told the n.s.a. something was going on it was the employees yes and the other thing you should gain glean from that particular disclosure is the fact that all of this information is in the databases of n.s.a. very interesting now talk about the relationship of the f.b.i. and the t.h.s. and the n.s.a. because you were speaking with a bit earlier about how the n.s.a. isn't the only one with all of these capabilities and all this data right well in

part gilman's interview with the director mueller the f.b.i. in i think was march of two thousand and eleven for time magazine it was published in time magazine he he had talked about the f.b.i. using stellar wind from our from october basically of two thousand and one so the f.b.i. has been using that database all along and and also in in march or thirty three march of two thousand and eleven also he testified to the senate judiciary committee where he was saying that he could go in to the data to a database the set up with the department of defense where he could go in with one query get all passed and all for all future emails as they come in on a person so that says the content being stored on people inside the united states because it's his response was how would you prevent a future fort hood and someone inside the united states becoming radicalized and keep doing it. pleading a terrorist act inside this country that means he's got access to they are in so

that's that's getting back to this massive collection that mark klein only exposed one one note of that collection in san francisco but that's the upstream collection process that we also know do you feel vindicated by all this information coming out from the n.s.a. . i guess the way i view it is that. edward snowden did a great public service because he presented information that cannot be refuted by the government and how they have to face what they've been doing n.s.a. whistleblower bill bennett thank you so much for coming answer. well as a result of all the n.s.a. rosalee revelations a slew of criticism has understandably come out from both congress and the american public the fact is that we don't understand everything that is going on within the agency and the obama administration as well as the senate and house intelligence committees just keep telling the public to trust them in the meantime president

obama also announced that he will be bringing in a panel of quote outside experts to review intelligence operations and to provide recommendations but the panel the president and i say director james clapper picked out might not provide as much of an objective perspective as civil liberties advocates were hoping for political commentator sam sachs explains so we know when congress wants to pretend to solve the problem they created the convening of six are doing a twelve or something like that well when the white house wants to pretend to solve a problem they create a panel or some sort of independent review board case in point the white house's recent problems with the n.s.a. . we're forming a high level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies i'm tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities particularly our surveillance technologies and they'll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people how we can make sure that

there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy. so basically a panel to make sure the n.s.a. isn't abusing these programs and that these programs aren't harming our foreign policy and this panel will issue a report at the end of the year got it so last week we learned exactly who's going to sit on this panel or this review board this review board filled with quote outside experts as the president said and who are the first to outside experts well the first is national security insider richard clarke richard clarke served on the national security council for president bush the first for bill clinton and president bush the second he was basically the counterterrorism czar for the white house the second outside expert is former cia insider michael morales who spent thirty three years working at the central intelligence agency briefed

bush on nine eleven he was alongside obama when bin laden was killed and he's the former director of the cia stepping down just in march of this year so he's been an outsider for all of five months now not to criticize these guys and their knowledge but clearly they've spent their careers focused on protecting the united states from a terrorist attack and not keeping the a.c.l.u. content by protecting civil liberties that these guys are probably taking advantage of these very same programs they're now tasked with reviewing so we're halfway through this panel and no one picked so far seems to really care about civil liberties which is really what started this debate to begin with now the next outsider on the independent review board is former white house insider cass sunstein he was basically the information and regulatory czar in charge of reviewing federal regulations and overseeing federal policies related to privacy and information quality now seemingly mr sunstein might be

a good fit on this panel except for this a paper he wrote in two thousand and ten titled conspiracy theories and which he warned of the dangers of people who hold. the theories and calls on the government to engage in something called cognitive infiltration where government agents might enter chat rooms online social networks or even real space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories in other words use government resources to infiltrate groups and organizations that are simply engaging in free speech so that's three panelists leaving only one god peter swire to actually focus on civil liberties and how these n.s.a. programs affect not just our fourth amendment rights privacy but also our first amendment rights to free association swire is a professor at the georgia institute of technology and recently he supported two legal briefs arguing that the n.s.a.

is mass collection of our metadata is unconstitutional so there's going to be someone on this end n.s.a. outsider review panel who's an outsider and actually cares about civil liberties well then it's peter swire unfortunately it's only peter swire because the rest are very clearly former national security and intelligence officials and then there's cass sunstein in his fairly radical views about cognitive infiltration now this is a credibility problem for the white house because the more cynical among us already dismissed this idea of an n.s.a. review board knowing full well that review boards are d.c. speak for kick the can down the road and now that we actually know who's sitting on this review board well it just proves the cynics are probably right in washington sam sachs r.t. . but it's not only domestic issues regarding n.s.a. spying the spying that the president is dealing with currently he has also need to

keep in syria's civil war as aggression in the country escalates secretary of state john kerry delivered a speech less than an hour ago saying that the u.s. has little doubt that syrian president bashar al assad and his regime used chemical weapons on the syrian people after images of dying children being carried to hospitals have gone global un investigators were finally allowed to inspect the area where the alleged chemical attack happened but right as the u.n. convoy entered the area snipers the and firing down on the group forcing them to temporarily retreat u.s. defense official said over the weekend that the navy has moved a fourth warship into the region all of those warships have the ability to launch ballistic missiles if tensions come to that over the assad regime denies using chemical weapons on its people and says that the sniper shooting weapons at the inspectors were terrorists now the world is waiting and watching to see how things

play out here to discuss america's options when it comes to syria i'm joined by brian becker he's a national coordinator at the answer coalition he's here with me in d.c. . is a middle east analyst in new york and from miami it was most often the executive director for the syrian emergency task force gentlemen thank you so much for joining me let's start with you was the u.s. it is moving ships toward the shores of syria and readying cruise missiles plus the secretary of state john kerry is speaking out as well as british foreign minister william hague upping the rhetoric in this intervention so my question to you is is it western intervention in syria becoming a more realistic prospect. i think that way that the secretary of state spoke today and came out sort of saying unequivocally that the regime is the perpetrator behind the chemical weapons attack and in the way that he spoke about it i think that signifies that there will be some sort of military action or a military response by the united states and international community so i think now

we're coming to a point where we will see something happen but what scale that's that's another question is it a good idea. absolutely i think any time the regime in the government uses chemical weapons. weapons that should be used by no one at all and if something like this is allowed to happen as it has been in the past on separate occasions where it's been documented that it was the regime that has used for example in the different areas of syria this was the largest sense and if there is no response by the international community that is for the green light for the regime to continue these insane humanitarian rights abuses brian you're on the other end of the spectrum how do you respond to what you just that the idea that the syrian government would carry out poison gas attack the day before the u.n. inspectors were coming into syria to investigate a previous reported poison gas attack is completely ludicrous this is a stage provocation by the so-called free syrian army the so-called rebels who are

fueled and have their weapons fueled by foreign proxy governments of the united states including got power and saudi arabia not democratic governments they're staging a provocation because they know that without foreign military intervention they can't win they can't defeat the assad government militarily and they don't have a popular base significant enough compared to the assad government support to do the job so they're doing everything they can in concert with the hawks in washington kerry those in the pentagon establishment who want to go in as they did in iraq in two thousand and three as they bombed libya in two thousand and eleven as they want to do again in syria this is a stage provocation i want to get you in here you believe that the u.s. has the moral imperative to get involved in syria if there is proof of chemical weapons used by the assad regime now given how difficult it will be to ascertain who used chemical weapons with one hundred percent certainty what do you think the

next move for the global community should be. put uses of chemical weapons in parenthesis to highlight that till now we don't know for sure who used the chemical weapons in syria we know that there were chemical weapons used but we are not certain not even to a minimum degree to justify military intervention however if the proof is concrete to prove that the syrian regime have used chemical weapons then definitely the united states and the international community have a moral obligation however the track record of the u.s. administrations with allegations of chemical weapons use it or existence we remember the big theatrical show done by colin powell at the security council before the invasion of iraq on the. cetera until today there is no

trace of w m d in iraq so we have to be really very very careful if chemical weapon was reduced then this would justify an intervention not only from the united states but from the international community now and one thing you have been in syria with great frequency one of the biggest objections to the u.s. arming the rebels is that the weapons could eventually get into the hands of fundamentalists and be used against us characterize the free syrian army soldiers that you've met and worked with and done. sure but first of all i just want to say real quickly that this isn't like iraq in terms of you know you know speaking about weapons of mass destruction that in exist there we know that there are chemical weapons in the hands of the syrian regime we know that he has used them in the past with unequivocal evidence we know that by no means do the rebels have the delivery systems if they even in

a crazy world got chemical weapons to to use them and we know that it took five days for the for the inspectors to go in and inspect and these things of the regime had nothing to hide he should have let them in right away and proven that these rebels have used them and that being said to go to your question i think it is it is very important that first of all everybody wants a political solution everybody wants this crisis and i think the syrian people are incredibly tired but i think that if we do arms are flowing to syria whether we like it or not whether the united states or the west arms or not and they're going to different groups and sometimes not the right people at all and is open the room for for extremists sort of come in into the fray of this conflict so it's imperative that we arm the right people in the right people are the ones that defected from them from the army from the. innocent children do want to shoot their own people and you know i know when i did see a lifeless bodies dying. in areas where there was you that got

a lot of people to go and these are not things that went on my own and let's get brian here brian what were you going to say the united states government has been on a course to overthrow the government in syria because it's an independent nationalist government it was formally syria was formally a colony they did the same thing in libya they bombed libya in two thousand and eleven they they invaded iraq in two thousand and three we see war after war after war what's the real reason for the war it's not because one government has a better or worse human rights record it's not about chemical weapons the middle east possesses two thirds of the world's oil the us wants to show that it's going to control this resource rich part of the world the bush administration and the obama administration are doing the exact same thing using chemical weapons as a pretext to carry out illegal act of aggression against a sovereign country the people in the united states by the way by by a margin of ninety percent ninety percent oppose any military strikes on syria and

matt i'm going to give you the last fifteen seconds here. first the free syrian army as the gentleman from miami referred to was he sees that they have defected and they went because the one through to shoot any civilians or children on the other side if they were armed by the western powers they are going to turn around and shoot other civilians but just because they have a different political conviction doesn't make them the enemy and we're going to end it there unfortunately bryan factor a national coordinator at the answer kollection octet foxy a middle east analyst and was mostafa political director of the syrian emergency task force this conversation to go on for days thank you so much for joining me gentlemen and making it possible. thank you. and while the u.s. considers action in syria in the wake of evidence suggesting the q set of chemical weapons a startling new revelation from foreign policy magazine shows that the u.s. played a role in helping saddam hussein using get this sarin gas to defeat iranian troops

back in one thousand eight here's how according to declassified cia documents there were discovered that were discovered at the national archives using satellite images u.s. intelligence officials convey the location of iranian troops to iraq fully aware that hussein's military what attack with chemical weapons including sarin a lethal nerve agent and it gets worse according to those same declassified cia documents senior u.s. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks they are tantamount to an official american admission of complicity complicity in some of the most gruesome of chemical weapons attacks ever launched here to talk about this bombshell revelation is that ray mcgovern he's a former cia analyst raised thank you so much for coming in and put this into some historical context for us what does this sort of revelation mean. welly the old

saw about giving hypocrisy a bad name it has been overused for a very good reason recently but what we have here is a situation where the united states government. enabled. almost to conquer you run them by providing iraq with satellite photography and turning a. blind eye to its use of chemical weapons including sarin gas what happened here is that. you were i was about to win the war and the satellite photography showed that there was a hole in the iraqi lines and so we were we told the rockies where the hole was what the rings were preparing. do. enter sarin gas and tens of thousands of iranian troops were killed now in the broader context if i were in iranian and i just heard that the the duly elected government of fifty three had been deposed by

the cia in fifty three and then i saw in eighty seven that we we're rain ians we're just about to win the war when this happened you know i would feel really really strongly that we have. real grievances against the united states and their mission it now is because we have a new government in iran and it's going to be very hard for them to tamp down this this hatred you know this resentment when you have the rebels the revolutionary guards and all those other people saying how can you trust the americans in fifty three they were through our government eighty seven they prevented us from winning the war against iraq how can you trust them so it's going to really requires some flexibility that we haven't seen the port of washington to work out an agreement with iran you know it's hard to have this conversation without bringing up the iraq war a huge reason that the u.s. gave for going into the iraq war was the fact that saddam hussein had used sarin

gas on the kurds so how does this argument complicates this narrative the fact that the u.s. might have in fact been supporting saddam hussein as he was using these chemical weapons or at the very least turning a blind eye well we had the famous picture of donald rumsfeld shaking hands with saddam hussein that happened the day after the first public announcement that the iraqis had used mustard gas against the iranians ok so blind eye well you go in spades. the rest of the problem really is that we knew what was going on and you know the geneva convention against the use of chemical warfare our top leaders knew it you know i go through all this i know these people you know and you question is you know had no conscience i don't know shame whistleblowing comes into play here why did none of these people i'm not

talking about casey the head of the cia or gates who is deputy evil or supervisory goals i'm talking about people who knew on the ground people who could have said hate you know i'm against chemical warfare you're not you know not only not doing anything about it but you're aiding and abetting it i'm going to go to the new york times which is that in those days was would check with the government before they publish something it's very interesting and the most surprising part of all of this is that these documents are obviously declassified and they were just sitting and these archives in maryland so it just brings up the question what else could be in those archives that we just don't know about ray mcgovern former cia analyst thank you so much for coming in was welcome. and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and for the latest and greatest information on all the stories that we covered and a few that we just did not have time to get to check out our web site r.t. dot com forward slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter app meghan

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